The short answer is a forceful YES!
Learning is a never-ending process, and how can you improve or create a breakthrough if you don’t think learning is important. However, unlike an expert, a true leader does not just think about their own learning, they think of the learning that occurs for themselves as well as for those that they are leading.
Everyone has three domains of knowledge and skills. First domain is what I call ‘Knowledge’. This is what the leader knows, excels at, and probably the reason why they were able to rise through the ranks. But as Peter Drucker said, the skills that got you the promotion are often not the skills that you need to be successful in your new position.
That is when awareness of the second domain of knowledge and skills becomes important. The second domain is the leader’s ability to access their ‘Ignorance’. This is what you know you don’t know. An attribute of a great leader knows its own strengths and weaknesses, and their ability to rely on others as they bring those skills to the table you do not have. Similarly, the executive that just received his or her promotion, now knows that they have to invest time and learn a set of new skills to be successful in their new position.
However, deep learning and the ability to lead a high performing team come from the third and under-appreciated domain that I call ‘Blindness’. This is what you don’t know you don’ know. A leader’s ability to access this blindness is only made possible by their ability to engage and interact with their team and other around them in a mood of wonder. An important element of true learning, is your ability to inquire, your ability to live in the question. In my opinion, you only are able to access this through conversations with yourself and others. Deep learning occurs in a conversation where you can look at the argument from the other’s perspective and see how they come to their conclusions, and vice versa.
When you are in a conversation where each of you has your own conclusion, you have an opportunity to create deep learning. Your ability in that conversation to distinguish between the facts and interpretations they have observed, as well as their ability to distinguish between the facts and interpretations you have observed is critical to ongoing learning. Often times, when this happens it will open up new possibilities for you as well as for the other. Rarely will the solution be just yours or theirs. When that is the case, you have now uncovered some of the blindness, and deep learning has occurred.
The true test for learning is listening. Listening skills are often overlooked in organizations and it can easily be its own topic. For this conversation, it is where you fully focus on hearing and understanding what the other said without linking it to how it might fit with your conclusions. I know, it is easier said then done, but once you are aware of this not all that difficult. You know when you listened when you are in a conversation and you hear yourself thinking: “I had never thought of looking at it in that way”, or a derivative thereof.
